NASA Could Attempt Space Shuttle Launch Sunday
Posted on: Thursday, 14 July 2005, 14:10 CDT
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA said Thursday that it will not make another attempt to launch space shuttle Discovery until at least Sunday - and even that is a "really optimistic good-luck scenario."
Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said the space agency still probably faces several days of troubleshooting to figure out what caused the faulty fuel-gauge reading that forced the cancellation of Wednesday's launch.
The only way the shuttle would be able to fly on Sunday is "if we go in and wiggle some wires and find a loose connection," said Hale, who conceded that was unlikely to work.
Wednesday's liftoff would have been the first shuttle flight in 2 1/2 years since the grounding of the space program after the Columbia accident. With little more than two hours to go and the astronauts on-board, the flight was canceled because a fuel gauge read full when it should have read empty.
Hale said the space agency had 12 engineering teams around the country trying to figure out why, but so far they haven't solved the problem.
"I wish I had more answers for you," he said.
He wouldn't rule out the chance of launching Discovery in July, and NASA officials have no immediate plans to move Discovery from the launch pad back to its hangar, which would require more days of delay.
NASA has until the end of the month to send the shuttle and its seven astronauts to space on their 12-day mission or it must wait until September. The launch timing is dictated by both the position of the space station and NASA's desire to hold a daylight liftoff so it can photograph the spacecraft during its climb to orbit and watch out for possible damage.
"I'm not ready to give up on a July window," Hale said. "We still have several days ahead of us."
On Wednesday, shuttle managers found themselves on the defensive, explaining why they pressed ahead with the launch when the same type of potentially fatal problem with the fuel gauges cropped up during a fueling test just three months ago and was accepted as an "unexplained anomaly."
The space agency requires all four of its hydrogen-fuel gauges to be working to ensure that the main engines shut off in space at just the right moment. If the engines shut down too soon or too late because of erroneous gauge readings, the results could be catastrophic. For instance, the engines could rupture if they kept running after the tank sprang a leak and ran out of fuel.
Some engineers had pushed for further testing at the pad before committing to a liftoff, but were overruled by top managers who concluded that the replacement of cables, the electronics box and the tank itself was ample.
However, even if NASA had conducted another fueling test in June, Hale said it's unclear whether the fuel gauge would have malfunctioned the way it did in a checkout test: Instead of showing an empty tank, the gauge kept showing full.
The delayed launch came just a day after an embarrassing turn for NASA, when a plastic cockpit window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged its fragile thermal tiles before the spacecraft had even taken off.
Wednesday's launch delay disappointed space buffs across the country. From Cape Canaveral, where congressmen and astronaut families had come to witness the awe-inspiring sight of a rocket launch, to museums coast to coast where schoolchildren had gathered, the postponement of the long-awaited return to space was disheartening.
"I wanted to see it really, really, really bad," groaned 8-year-old Michael Schamtin of Sherwood, Ore., who had waited for liftoff at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
When the shuttle finally does take off, the astronauts will test new techniques for inspecting and repairing cracks and holes similar to the damage that doomed Columbia in 2003.
In the 2 1/2 years since Columbia broke apart on its return to Earth, NASA has worked to fix its "safety culture," which the accident investigators concluded broke down during the flight.
NASA also has concentrated on making the external fuel tank safer by reducing the risk that foam insulation, ice or other debris will break off at launch. The gauge that caused trouble on Wednesday is in the external fuel tank, but was unrelated to any of the safety modifications.
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Source: By MARCIA DUNN/AP
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